Hell Hath No Fury

 

Most people think the line, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” comes from Shakespeare, but that is incorrect (I can already hear everyone thinking, God, now that she has a Master’s in literature, she’s REALLY going to be insufferable — fear not, though; there will still only be one or two Jeopardy! categories appropriate to my knowledge, and it’s not like I’m making more money than, well, anyone).  The quote is actually from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride.  Congreve also wrote The Way of the World, which bizarrely features a male character named Mirabell.

Anyway. 

Yesterday I was cleaning out several superfluous boxes of books I have squirrelled away in my closet (in case of a literature emergency, I imagine, after a Book Apocalypse, when all I will have available to me in stores will be the mindless women’s magazines designed for the sole purpose of making me purchase makeup and weight loss pills).  I stumbled upon a vast and horrifying collection of diaries from my more, er, formative years (read: BEYOND awkward).  I went into cringingly minute detail about each and every boy who ever laid a grubby paw on my person.  I’m sure I thought it was fascinating shit at the time, but now it just makes me want to run screaming to a foreign country and take up residence where no one will know me. 

Because, apprently, despite being beyond awkward, I was also something of a tramp. 

It poses an interesting question:  How can one tell if one was/is a tramp?  Well, for one thing, there were so many names and incidents that I occasionally found myself baffled.  Then, I found myself having to look up some of the diary-mentioned boys in my yearbooks, whereupon a long, “OOooooh.  THATguy…” session of remembering would ensue.  Definately Tramp material.  Nice Girls, I feel, would remember both guys they ever made out with.   

And suddenly I realized that one guy was suspiciously missing. 

And then I remembered why.  Because when I was dating him, I was smoking way too much pot to ever write anything coherent down, in a journal or otherwise.  I was lucky to be able to Velcro my shoes. 

Robert was one who got away… quite literally.  Although no one was particularly sorry to see him go.  He borrowed about $1000 from me, repaired his car, packed up his stereo and then announced abruptly that he was leaving me for my best friend — my best friend at the time, I should mention, was a boy named Sean.  He and Sean were secret gay lovers and were moving to Virginia the next day. 

But where, oh where, then, was I supposed to get my pot from?!

He called, about six months later, in tears, sobbing that he’d made a terrible error, and that he wasn’t gay, and that Sean was mean to him (one can only imagine).  Could he move back to town and be with me again?  Please and thanks? 

Being the gracious soul of compassion that I am, filled to the brim with the milk of human kindness and mercy, I said “Sure!”  Then I gently instructed him to sell his car, his stereo and get his apartment’s first and last month deposit back, and to send me the check.  I would get him his old apartment in town and mail him a plane ticket.  Profusely grateful, he actually did as I bade.

The second I got the check in the mail, I cashed it, bought a sports car and then changed my phone number.  I never heard from him again.  I like to imagine that he’s living in a box somewhere under a highway in VA, giving handjobs to homeless men in exchange for cigarettes.

A girl’s gotta dream, you know?